An anonymous reader writes: IBM has initiated a new training program that will cut the pay of participating employees by 10%. A memo detailing the new program was sent last week to affected IBM employees in its Global Technology Services strategic outsourcing group. It begins by telling the worker that an assessment has revealed "that some managers and employees have not kept pace with acquiring the skills and expertise needed to address changing client needs, technology and market requirements." It then tells the recipient that "you have been identified as one of these employees," and says that from mid-October through the end of March, "you will dedicate up to one day per week," or up to 23 working days total, "to focus on learning and development." But IBM is coupling this training with a six month salary reduction. The key statement in the memo is this: "While you spend part of your workweek on learning and development activities, you will receive 90% of your current base salary."Link to Original Source

cweditor writes: Only 26% of Americans with a four-year science, technology, engineering or math degree are working in tech jobs. So how is it that there's supposed to be a shortage of STEM workers in the U.S.? — Computerworld story

Lucas123 writes: Scientists developing smart robotic prosthetics say the lines between robots and humans is beginning to blur and that someday soon people will be able to improve their body. For example, Robotic prosthetics, using a built-in computer, 100 sensors and 17 motors can take natural cues from a user's residual limb, giving him or her the dexterity and grace to play a piano. Robotic exoskeletons have helped people suffering from paralysis walk again and the U.S. military is just weeks away from testing a new exoskeleton, or Iron Man-like suit. And, more than six years ago, a University of Arizona researcher who had successfully connected a moth's brain to a robot predicted that by 2022 we'll be using "hybrid" computers that run a combination of technology and living organic tissue. "By utilizing technology, you're able to improve your body beyond anything you could do in the past," said Daniel Wilson, an engineer with degrees in machine learning and robotics from Carnegie Mellon University.Link to Original Source

kyriacos writes: Dutch forensic experts discovered how to accurately date fingerprints, a breakthrough that could one day let police date crime scene prints from years ago. Fingerprints leave nearly-unique marks on a surface that can be copied and compared to a database to identify a suspect, a police technique that rose to prominence in the early 1900s. The prints themselves are made up of sweat and grease, including a complex mix of cholesterol, amino acids and proteins. 'The chemicals in these fingerprints can be analysed,' said Marcel de Puit, fingerprint researcher at the Dutch Forensic Institute (NFI). 'Some disappear over time and it's the relative proportions of these chemicals that allow us to date a fingerprint.' As the database expands, so should the technique's reliability, allowing police to date fingerprints from several years before.Link to Original Source

cweditor writes: That's the claim from several blog posts of late, the most recent apparently basing its argument on the fact that R is hard to learn (unlike, say, data science). Counterargument: Is it too much to ask that claims about programming for data science include, oh, some actual data?Link to Original Source

Lucas123 writes: Marine biologists from OCEARCH, a non-profit shark research project, have been tagging scores of great whites and other shark species with an array of wireless technologies, gathering granular data on the sharks over the past year or more. For example, Mary Lee, a great white shark that's the same weight and nearly the same length as a Buick, was tagged off of Cape Cod and has made beach visits up and down the U.S. East Coast and Bermuda. She came so close to beaches that the research team alerted local authorities. The team attaches an array of acoustic and satellite tags as well as accelerometers to the sharks, which collect more than 100 data points every second — 8.5 million data points per day. The data has provided a detailed, three-dimensional view of the shark's behavior, which the team has been sharing in real time on its website. OCEARCH plans to expand that data sharing over the next few weeks to social networks and classrooms.Link to Original Source

rjupstate writes: Some medical app developers claim that Apple's iOS App Store guidelines prohibits them from including drug and dosing information in reference apps for doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. Is Apple being safety conscious or playing favorites?Link to Original Source

Lucas123 writes: Why R? It's free, open source, powerful and highly extensible and its hot. Whether measured by more than 4,400 add-on packages, the 18,000+ members of LinkedIn's R group or the close to 80 R Meetup groups currently in existence, there can be little doubt that interest in the R statistics language, especially for data analysis, is soaring. Because it's a programmable environment that uses command-line scripting, you can store a series of complex data-analysis steps in R. That lets you re-use your analysis work on similar data more easily than if you were using a point-and-click interface, notes Hadley Wickham, author of several popular R packages and chief scientist with RStudio.Link to Original Source

There is a continuum on a scale that goes from "I have my own rights and I don't care about anyone else" to "What the individual wants isn't important, it's only the common good that matters." Most of us dislike both extremes and find our beliefs somewhere between the two. In this case, most residents thought the emergency and very temporary needs of their community were significantly more important than their own personal convenience and voluntarily complied with a request to stay in for part of a day. Seems eminently reasonable to me, and so I find it curious to be critical of that.

eldavojohn writes: On September 14th a PDF report titled "Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945" penned by the Library of Congress' nonpartisan Congressional Research Service was released to little fanfare. However the following conclusion of the report has since roiled the GOP enough to have the report removed from the Library of Congress: 'The results of the analysis suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution. As measured by IRS data, the share of income accruing to the top 0.1% of U.S. families increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% by 2007 before falling to 9.2% due to the 2007-2009 recession. At the same time, the average tax rate paid by the top 0.1% fell from over 50% in 1945 to about 25% in 2009. Tax policy could have a relation to how the economic pie is sliced—lower top tax rates may be associated with greater income disparities.' From the New York Times article: 'The pressure applied to the research service comes amid a broader Republican effort to raise questions about research and statistics that were once trusted as nonpartisan and apolitical.' It appears to no longer be found on the Library of Congress' website.Link to Original Source

jfruh writes: "If you want a quick list of the names and addresses of young women within half a mile of you (who happen to be likely Democratic voters), all you need to do is download the Obama For America app to your smartphone. Want to be given a handy list of your neighbors for you to track to and from the polls? Just download the app from the GOP's Project ORCA. In their quest to put information in the hands of campaign volunteers, the Obama and Romney campaigns are definitely pushing things into creepy territory."Link to Original Source